Red Harvest Redux

As mentioned earlier, harvest in das ‘hood is in full ring-a-ding-ding. I’ve been toolin’ around Oakley and neighboring Antioch — just call me Jimmy Olsen, Cub Reporter — hoping to snap some pix of crews rocking the fruit.

We posted last week about meeting Tom Del Barba supervising a Zin harvest for The Wine Group’s Cardinal Zin; the other day I saw industrial-size bins, laden with purple gold (way to mix lexicon, colors and metaphors, Tone), by the side of Main Street at Cline’s Big Break Vineyard.

Also last week, I drove into that industrial park cul-de-sac that, all along, I thought was Frank Evangelho’s vyd. As they say in the wine biz, “Mea Gulpa.” It made perfect sense that the site of an empty industrial park beside an ancient vineyard would have been the locus of a municipal eminent domain battle to widen a road and rip out some vines. We were actually off by two blocks — city blocks, not vineyard blocks. As usual with this thang, we got one answer, which raised two questions.

Our “Evangelho” vyd, on the one side of the driving range, is actually owned by the Gonsalves family, growers/owners of many plots around CoCo. Frank’s parcel is on the other side of the golf range. I guess that’s what’s so weird: I admit that I didn’t survey his vyd, but I couldn’t see any evidence of concrete or asphalt encroaching on his vines.

Now, the (formerly-thought-by-us-to-be-Frank’s) Gonsalves property on the other side of the links, is just plain problematic: It is a dead end; it was indeed developed to house heretofore nonexistent businesses; as said dead end, it is the perfect dumping ground for all your large-scale garage sale items that a handwritten “FREE!” sign won’t take care of.

Which brings me to the coolest needle to this whole funky thread. I was invited a couple of days ago to a meeting of the Contra Costa Wine, Grape and Olive Growers Association. It’s a cool, if loose-knit, casual gang of wine aficionados, industry honchos and retailers dedicated to bringing the love to CoCo.

At the meeting, I struck up a conversation with Mike Parker, a wine broker with many years in das biz, and just as many stories. Mike specializes in bringing together growers who find themselves with extra fruit, and winemakers big and small who need a ton here to round out a blend, or a row there for their home winemaking hobby. Mike said that it’s a real sign of the times when established growers are courting home winemakers, and a lot of garagistes lost out this year when some Napa growers pruned back the leaf canopy on the vines to promote ripening, only to have the clusters fry when we had a hot spell. Hobbyists who usually buy Napa fruit had to come up with a Plan B: Hello, Oakley!

Mike happened to be at the Gonsalves property minutes after I was, and he brokered a monster grape sale one day later. He did have to laugh when I told him that that cul-de-sac was a notorious dumping ground: That day workers were picking for Bonny Doon’s “Contra” blend, whose label actually showcases a derelict couch tossed at the end of the road. It’s the dominant feature of the Contra label: a ratty sofa surrounded by old vines.

And, two doors down, they’re laughin’ and drinkin’ and havin’ a party. Or getting ready to, anyway: See Evangelho photo above, the site for Parkmon’s 2007 Evangelho Zinfandel, which Kath and I tried a while back

Tons of blackberry juice and cane fruit, like it came straight off the vine.
It’s big on the nose, but full of bramble berries, alcohol and cracked pepper. You’ll worry that you’re going to catch a tastebud on a thorn. It’s rich, yet elegantly subdued on the finish. Very tasty.